Analyze an IssueSociety & culture

People are shaped more by the communities they belong to than by their own individual choices.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning. In developing and supporting your position, consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true, and explain how those considerations shape your view.

Write your response

Give yourself 30 minutes, then get an instant estimate against the official rubric.

Issue prompt

Your essay0 words

An expert estimate against the official rubric, not an official ETS score. ETS scores with a human reader plus the e-rater engine.

Your estimated score and rubric breakdown will appear here.

How to approach it

A reliable structure for any Issue prompt.

1Take a clear position in the first paragraph. The reader should know exactly where you stand on the issue before the body begins.
2Develop two or three reasons, each with a specific example. Depth beats a long list of thin points.
3Answer the strongest counter-argument. Engaging the other side is what separates a 5 from a 4.
4Leave two minutes to proofread. A few clean sentences at the end lift the language score.

For the full 0–6 band descriptors and what each score means, see the AWA grader guide.

This prompt

How to approach this prompt.

Notice that individual choices are themselves made from options a community supplies. Rather than scoring community against choice, argue that the two are entangled: communities set the menu, but individuals choose from it, and sometimes reject it entirely.

Both sides

Points for and against.

A strong essay does not just pick a side. Weigh the best case each way, then explain which considerations shape your own view.

In support

Language, values, and expectations are absorbed from community long before a person is old enough to choose, forming the frame within which later choices happen.
The most consequential facts about a life, such as where one is born and into what culture, are unchosen yet powerfully shaping.

Against, or complicating

People routinely defy their communities: reformers, emigrants, and dissenters reshape their own lives against the grain of where they came from.
Two people from the identical community diverge sharply, which suggests individual choice does real, independent work.

Evidence

Examples you could use.

Specific, relevant examples are what readers reward most. Here are concrete cases you could adapt for this exact statement. Use them as reasoning, not as facts to recite.

1An immigrant who deliberately adopts and blends a new culture with the one they were raised in.
2Reformers who broke sharply from the norms of the community that raised them.
3Siblings raised in the same household who make opposite life choices.

Watch out

A common trap on this prompt.

Treating community and choice as a zero-sum split. They interact, since choices are made from community-supplied options, and an essay that forces a clean winner ignores that feedback.

Questions

GRE essay questions, answered.

There is no required word count. High-scoring Analyze an Issue essays are typically well-developed across four to six paragraphs, roughly 400 to 600 words, but a reader rewards depth of reasoning and specific support, not raw length. A tight, fully developed 450-word essay outscores a padded 700-word one.

The GRE Analytical Writing task is scored holistically from 0 to 6 in half-point steps against the official ETS descriptors. The reported score averages one trained human reader and the e-rater engine; if they disagree by more than a point, a second human reader adjudicates. It is reported separately from the 260 to 340 Verbal and Quant total.

No. This is an original prompt written in the official Analyze an Issue style so you can practise freely. The real ETS pool is published on the ETS website. Practising on same-style prompts builds the exact skills the scored task rewards, since every Issue prompt uses the same task instructions and the same rubric.

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